Director of Engineering

Who is Recruiting from Scratch: Recruiting from Scratch is a specialized talent firm dedicated to helping companies build exceptional teams. We partner closely with our clients to deeply understand their needs, then connect them with top-tier candidates who are not only highly skilled but also the right fit for the company's culture and vision. Our mission is simple: place the best people in the right roles to drive long-term success for both clients and candidates. Title of Role: Director of Engineering Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Company Stage of Funding: Series B Venture-Backed Startup Office Type: Hybrid (3 Days per Week in Office) Salary: $216,000 - $293,000 Base + Equity Director of Engineering Company Description A fast-growing venture-backed cybersecurity company is seeking a Director of Engineering to help scale its engineering organization during a pivotal growth phase. The company builds cutting-edge security technology designed to help development and security teams identify, prioritize, and remediate critical risks in modern software systems. With strong market traction, significant venture funding, and rapidly growing enterprise adoption, the organization is transitioning from early-stage startup operations into a scalable engineering and product organization. This is a unique opportunity to join at a stage where the technical foundation is strong and the company is investing heavily in leadership, infrastructure, and product innovation. The engineering team is highly technical, collaborative, and globally distributed. This role will work closely with leadership across product, security research, and platform engineering to scale both the organization and the underlying technology powering the platform. What You Will Do As Director of Engineering, you will play a key leadership role in scaling the engineering organization and delivering high-impact platform capabilities. You will: Lead and grow multiple engineering teams across platform, infrastructure, services, and user-facing product development. Manage and mentor engineering managers and senior individual contributors, building a strong leadership bench as the company scales. Drive the execution of key engineering initiatives and product delivery milestones. Partner closely with product management, security research, and cross-functional leadership to align engineering priorities with business goals. Help scale distributed teams across multiple geographies while maintaining strong engineering culture and collaboration. Oversee complex technical projects from design and architecture through production delivery. Contribute to long-term technical strategy around platform scalability, reliability, and developer productivity. Support the evolution of engineering processes, infrastructure, and operational excellence as the company continues to grow. Ensure engineering teams maintain a strong focus on quality, performance, and customer impact. This role combines technical leadership, organizational scaling, and strategic execution, making it ideal for leaders who enjoy operating at both the technical and organizational levels. Ideal Candidate Background The ideal candidate is an experienced engineering leader who has helped scale teams at high-growth startups while maintaining strong technical credibility with senior engineers. Typical backgrounds include: 15+ years of experience in software engineering, including experience building large-scale distributed systems. 5+ years leading engineering teams through engineering managers, with responsibility for multiple teams or organizations. Experience at high-growth startups (Series A-C) or scaling product teams during rapid growth phases. Strong background in developer platforms, cloud infrastructure, security, or developer tools. Hands-on experience with modern cloud architectures and microservices-based systems. Demonstrated success managing distributed and multi-geography engineering teams. Ability to operate comfortably across both strategic planning and deep technical discussions. Experience collaborating closely with product and cross-functional stakeholders to deliver complex technical products. Preferred While not required, the following experience would be beneficial: Background in cybersecurity, application security, DevSecOps, or cloud security. Experience building developer platforms, developer tools, or infrastructure products. Familiarity with technologies such as Go, React, Kubernetes, and microservices architectures. Experience operating large-scale SaaS platforms in cloud environments (GCP, Azure, or AWS). Experience leading teams delivering AI-enabled products or developer productivity tools. Experience scaling engineering organizations from startup to growth-stage companies. Compensation, Benefits, and Perks Base Salary: $216,000 - $293,000 (flexibility for exceptional candidates) Competitive equity package in a high-growth venture-backed company Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits Hybrid work environment with in-office collaboration in Palo Alto Visa sponsorship available for qualified candidates Relocation assistance may be provided Opportunity to help scale an engineering organization at a company with strong market momentum Work alongside a team of experienced engineers and security experts building technology used by modern development teams This is an opportunity to lead and scale a world-class engineering team at a company shaping the future of application security and developer infrastructure. Candidates who enjoy solving complex technical problems while building high-performing engineering organizations are encouraged to apply.

Created: 2026-03-17